Fulcrum Therapeutics raises $80 million in series B

Here’s some encouraging news about Fulcrum Therapeutics. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech that is developing a drug to treat Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy has announced it has closed $80 million in series B financing.

The company hopes to go public early next year, after filing papers with the FDA to begin human testing of its first drug, for FSHD, according the Fulcrum’s CEO, Robert Gould.

“We think that the strength of the preclinical data and the quality of the compound is such that it’ll be an attractive investment opportunity,” he says. Fulcrum’s work was presented at the FSH Society’s FSHD Connect conference this past June by Dr. Lucienne Ronco. Her presentation can be seen here.

Fulcrum reached out to patient groups to figure out which diseases to go after, even before the company was officially formed in 2016. That led it to FSHD. Fulcrum has worked with the FSH Society to obtain muscle tissue samples from people with the disease undergoing surgery as part of their treatment. The company has used those samples to grow muscle cells from the tissue and test its drug candidates against those cells. “It’s a unique relationship,” FSH Society CSO and co-founder Daniel Perez told Xconomy last year.

Read more about Fulcrum’s close collaboration with the FSH Society in this Xconomy report.